Two days to go and it's still anybody's race

MICHAEL PORTILLO, the bookies' favourite for Tory leader, had scare after scare this week when his bandwagon seemed to lose momentum. However, as DAVID CRACKNELL reports, Lady Thatcher's backing could see him safely home.

By David Cracknell

12:01AM BST 15 Jul 2001

MICHAEL PORTILLO had every reason to feel confident on Monday night as he came to the end of his five-minute speech to the members of the 1922 Committee of back-bench Tory MPs.

The shadow chancellor, still the undisputed frontrunner in the leadership contest, was greeted by loud cheers and table-banging from colleagues as he entered the hustings meeting in Committee Room 14 of the House of Commons.

His five-minute speech, in which he stressed the need for the party to change its "focus, tone and language", appeared to go down well with the crowd and he readied himself for questions from the floor.

Then, from the sea of faces, rose the hand of Julian Brazier, a well-known campaigner for family values and long-time critic of Mr Portillo's "social liberalism". "What is your position on Section 28?" asked the MP for Canterbury, referring to the measure introduced during the Thatcher years to prohibit the promotion of homosexuality by local education authorities.

Mr Portillo paused for barely a second before replying: "It will be one of the issues that I would include in a review of policy I would undertake if elected leader." However short and apparently innocuous that response, it was to prove one the most important moments in the contest.

It was evidently no accident that Mr Brazier, tall and military in bearing, is a key lieutenant of Iain Duncan Smith. While the shadow defence secretary himself has remained unerringly polite about Mr Portillo, his supporters have done all they can to draw attention to the shadow chancellor's childlessness and past homosexual experiences.

Mr Brazier's question appeared to be another such ploy, and, on its own terms, a successful one. The reply it elicited from Mr Portillo sparked particular fury at the Daily Mail, which has campaigned vociferously against the repeal of Section 28.

Before the election, the shadow chancellor had had a friendly meal with the newspaper's editor, Paul Dacre. And in the first days of the leadership contest, the Mail had dangled the carrot of support before him.

But Mr Portillo's remarks about Section 28, coupled with his apparent readiness to consider a change in law on cannabis, prompted a tirade of abuse from the paper.

Suddenly, the shadow chancellor found himself branded "warped" and accused of showing "monumental insensitivity to his core supporters" in the paper's editorial pages. Meanwhile, the Guardian and the Sun were wading in with their own attacks.

At Mr Portillo's headquarters in Barton Street, Westminster, on Tuesday, there was a wobble in confidence when he obtained only 49 votes in the contest's first round. The mood blackened further when, in Thursday's re-run ballot, he gained just one extra supporter.

One Portillo-ite raged: "If this party wants to waste 15 more years, then, you know, fine. But I don't want anything to do with it". Some Tory MPs - initially convinced that the shadow chancellor was a shoo-in in the parliamentary rounds of the contest - began to worry that the Portillo campaign was faltering.

"I'm just not sure what to do now," confided one MP who backed Mr Portillo in the first two bouts of the contest last week. "We all jumped on Michael's bandwagon because we thought he was the obvious winner, but now. . . "

The shadow chancellor's supporters were further disheartened on Friday, when David Davis withdrew from the race to back Mr Duncan Smith - a signal to his 17 supporters to follow suit.

Yesterday, Mr Portillo himself conceded on the BBC's Today programme that he was no longer the frontrunner. He said: "My assessment is that Iain Duncan Smith will certainly qualify, and that it is between Ken Clarke and me."

For the first time, members of the shadow chancellor's team privately admitted the possibility of defeat yesterday. A senior member confided: "There is a danger that we could be squeezed out."

This weekend, the race is on for the support of the 35 MPs who backed Michael Ancram and David Davis, both now out of the race. Andrew Mackay, who runs Mr Portillo's "numbers book", where all supporters are recorded, has ordered his troops to end the lobbying blitz.

Only "authorised" approaches to Ancram and Davis supporters are being made through established mutual friendships. A member of the Portillo team explained: "It's no good bombarding people at this stage - that will only backfire. We'll only go for a potential supporter through someone who is trusted by the target and knows them well."

Mr Duncan Smith's campaign remains more ostentatiously energetic. The shadow defence secretary's self-styled "officers" in the House have been busily tearing around the corridors all week, scribbling notes in a black folder used to record the "definites", "very likelies" and "possibles".

One of their number, basking in the fact that their man had increased his vote from 39 to 42 votes on Thursday, gleefully told of how he had spotted a Portillo-ite sleeping in the Commons Library earlier that afternoon while they had been working for extra votes.

"It was just like Peter Morrison," said the Duncan Smith supporter: a mischievous reference to Alan Clark's claim in his Diaries that Margaret Thatcher's parliamentary private secretary had been caught napping during her fight to survive in 1990.

Certainly, the contest that was meant to be so decorous has descended into nastiness and name-calling. In spite of their public claims to be conducting squeaky-clean campaigns, the respective supporters of Mr Portillo and Mr Duncan Smith have been pouring poison into the ears of those who voted for Mr Ancram and Mr Davis.

The Portillo-ites claim tartly that Mr Duncan Smith is "Hague Mark II" and "a nice version of Norman Tebbit"; while the shadow chancellor's homosexual past is constantly alluded to by the heavily loaded references to Mr Duncan Smith's "normalness" by his supporters.

Mr Clarke was the only one of the top three candidates to hold a party last week, seeking to make an early pitch for like-minded Ancram supporters at a reception at the Kennington home of his supporter, Anthony Steen, on Wednesday night.

Today, while his competitors hit the telephones, Mr Clarke will be watching the British Grand Prix at Silverstone with fellow directors of the British American Tobacco company. For all its public nonchalance, however, the Clarke campaign has been high-pitched in private.

His supporters claim that there would be "no sensible choice" for the party's grass roots if they were faced with a shortlist of Mr Portillo and Mr Duncan Smith, two Euro-sceptics. The former chancellor was spotted deep in conversation with Mr Ancram on Thursday morning in Portcullis House, the MPs' new office block.

Andrew Tyrie, Mr Clarke's campaign manager, was seen frantically searching for Mr Ancram later that afternoon, asking colleagues for the former party chairman's flat number in Smith Square. Mr Clarke is evidently doing all he can to hoover up the 17 votes that Mr Ancram gained in the second round before his elimination.

The orthodox assumption is that Mr Clarke will be the main beneficiary of Mr Ancram's supporters. However, an authoritative survey of the 35 key MPs carried out for The Telegraph by the psephologist Robert Hayward, himself a former Tory MP, has found that Mr Clarke is far from home and dry.

While Mr Clarke, who polled 39 votes on Thursday - up three from Tuesday - is expected to gain several of Mr Ancram's supporters and some of Mr Duncan Smith's, he is still some votes off the minimum 56 that he needs to guarantee him a place in the final shortlist of two.

On balance, Mr Hayward says, Mr Portillo has a better chance of making it, since, assuming he loses no supporters, he needs just six new votes to make the cut. The survey for this newspaper has established that he can already rely on at least three people - possibly four - switching to his cause in Tuesday's final ballot of MPs.

One looming possibility is that Tuesday's ballot will result in a tie for second place - this time between Mr Clarke and Mr Portillo. Sir Michael Spicer, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, has yet to decide whether in such a situation he would call for a re-run or allow all three candidates to go through to the ballot of party members.

Contrary to widespread belief within the party, Sir Michael actually foresaw the possibility of a tie for bottom place last Tuesday and decided, after consultation with the candidates two weeks ago, to hold a re-run.

The Telegraph can reveal that one of the camps threatened him with legal action if he eliminated two candidates in the event of a tie. His decision, however, did not extend to the final stages of the contest.

A week after his ambush over Section 28, the pendulum of fortune may now be swinging back in Mr Portillo's favour. As we disclose today, Baroness Thatcher, contrary to all expectation, backs the shadow chancellor, in spite of her strong personal and ideological ties with Mr Duncan Smith.

This revelation may persuade some Davis supporters to back Mr Portillo after all; it may even lead to a few defections from the Duncan Smith camp. But the effect of her backing is far from certain. To an extent that none of the candidates could have foreseen or possibly wished for, it is much too close to call.